University of Twente Student Theses

Variable geometry in the area of freedom security and justice: the Danish and British opt-out in practice: To what extent do the opt-outs of Denmark and the United Kingdom in the area of freedom, security and justice limit their influence on its internal development and external projection?

Breer, Anne
(2012)
Variable geometry in the area of freedom security and justice: the Danish and British opt-out in practice: To what extent do the opt-outs of Denmark and the United Kingdom in the area of freedom, security and justice limit their influence on its internal development and external projection?

From the establishment of the European integration in the 1950s towards the present, the EU was subject to a major modification of the loose intergovernmental project into a
supranational construct, implying the willingness of its members to dedicate themselves to the transfer of national competences, hence the delegation of a great degree of their sovereignty to the Union. During the last decade, the incipient and sensitive Area of Freedom, Security and Justice turned into one of the major integration projects of the Union. Simultaneously, this has also led to differentiated integration, mirrored in the Danish, British and Irish abstention from this area. Laying the focus on the single abstaining states, the emphasis on the benefit of autonomy is held against the costs of exclusion, namely the lost influence on the policy direction and future development of the AFSJ. A Europe of varying pace, implying
internal fragmentation resulting in legal disputes, constitutes the present reality under the AFSJ. As addressed in the following paper, the Danish and British opt-out position will be reflected on the internal and external dimension of the AFSJ. Not only the crosscutting nature of the two dimensions, but also the differences between the countries’ opt-outs raises the question regarding the effectiveness of the entire policy area and the degree of input those outsiders retained. Especially the incorporation of the external dimension of the AFSJ adds
the notion of the Union as an actor at the global stage, striving for unity. To evaluate the relation between the internal differentiated cooperation and external embodiment of the EU, the limits and possibilities of each opt-out is analysed and evaluated on the degree of influence and benefit, the countries maintained.